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Shkruar nga Edward Luce
Far from achieving the promised $2 trillion in savings, Doge could end up costing taxpayers
What started with a chainsaw is ending with a groan. Elon Musk’s impending departure from Washington prematurely closes the strangest chapter of Donald Trump’s presidency. By its own measure, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, nicknamed Doge, has failed. Far from delivering the promised $2 trillion in savings, Doge could end up costing taxpayers. In the meantime, Musk has been wreaking havoc on Tesla, where he will soon return. Was there a hidden method to his madness?
Two benefits to Musk can be discerned among the rubble. The first is the psychological value to him and Trump of hurting their enemies. The cliché of an expensive divorce worth every penny applies here. Musk’s net worth has fallen by about $130 billion since Trump took office. Yet he has instilled fear in bureaucracies, from the CIA to the Department of Education. The downsides of Doge’s “vale of tears”—a demoralized workforce and negative headlines about bogus savings—can be presented as victories. Musk attacked the “deep state.” With the help of the courts, the bureaucracy has held out, but it has been badly hurt.
Musk’s second benefit may take time to register. Trump’s “Golden Dome,” which aims to emulate Israel’s “Iron Dome” for the entire U.S., could be one of the biggest taxpayer expenditures since Ronald Reagan’s strategic defense initiative, known as “Star Wars.” In dollar terms, Trump’s dome could rival NASA’s Project Apollo, which cost $280 billion in today’s dollars. Since the missile shield would rely on a constellation of satellites, Musk’s SpaceX will be the main beneficiary. The company has formed a consortium for Golden Dome with Palantir and Anduril, run by his high-tech friends.
Musk’s lasting influence in Washington could therefore be the diversion of a large portion of American taxpayer money to his empire. As a parting gift, that would be very nice. Whether it would enhance US national security is someone else’s responsibility. Whether the Golden Dome contracts qualify as waste, fraud or abuse is someone else’s problem. When only one company can fulfill the project’s core functions, the prospect of an open bidding process is slim.
Yet Musk has damaged himself and shows no signs of stopping. What has prompted the Tesla boycotts in Europe and partly in the US is not Doge, but the filthy society that Musk keeps on his X platform. The satirical London ad campaign that called Tesla the “Swasticar” – “from zero to 1939 in three seconds” – came in response to his support for the far right, not his fight against bureaucracy. If he fails to contain his ego, Tesla’s brand will remain tainted. The fact that Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, called the vandalism of Tesla showrooms terrorism shows that Musk remains oblivious to his image problem. Not for the first time, psychology may be a better predictor of the Trump administration’s behavior than ideology.
In his own way, Trump is trying to soothe Musk’s wounded pride. Sitting in a corner of a cabinet meeting last week, Musk acknowledged the room’s gratitude for his sacrifice. In a tender farewell interview on Fox with Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, he seemed hurt by the public’s misunderstanding of him. “Now you’re here in Washington, D.C., with President Trump to save our country,” she said. “Has anyone said thank you?” Many people had thanked him, Musk said. But others had maliciously interpreted his Nazi-like greetings as Nazi salutes: “They’re really trying every angle to get me.”
In retrospect, it’s clear that Musk’s standing with Trump fell in early April when his money failed to sway the election of a conservative Supreme Court nominee in Wisconsin. Even though Musk spent $22 million in the most expensive judicial race ever, the other judge won, meaning that the key state’s highest court still has a liberal majority. Wisconsin was a test that Trump set and Musk failed. But his biggest test was whether Doge could uncover large-scale corruption. The fact that the judiciary and the Republican-controlled Congress are not enthusiastic about Musk’s “wall of bills” is a sign that the American system may be holding up better than expected.
Musk, however, has reached a crossroads. His artificial intelligence platform, Grok, had this to say about his time in Washington: “His DOGE experiment resulted in operational turmoil, legal entanglements, and limited results, overshadowing the modest gains… less a triumph than a cautionary tale.” If there is such a thing as a boomerang-returning chainsaw, Musk invented it./ Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “FinancialTimes”
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